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Ask HN: Is the ability to program required for a good system administrator?

1 points by new_hackers ↗ HN
I'm a programmer, not a system administrator. I see sys admins using GUIs all day long. In my heart I think this is the wrong way. My programmer side says "automate all the things!" But the sys admins aren't programmers and do not know, or wish to know, how to program. They are happy with GUIs.

So my question is: is the ability to program a prerequisite for good system administrators?

To put it another way: would you hire a sys admin that did not know, or want to know, how to program?

1 comment

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abeTom
I would not hire someone who claims to be a sys admin but has not coded( assuming that a sys admin is someone who would have a computer science or engineering background). Sys admins deal with processes and processes are nothing more than code executing on hardware. This would imply that at some level of your training you would have to have had exposure to hardware(computer architecture/organization, assembly language, discrete math) and how code brings about the desired outcome from that hardware at a systems level. That such a question is even asked frightens me about who is managing systems these days.